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HalloKitty posted:To maintain any faith in humanity, you have to believe it's some kind of spam bot. Hope the hourly is competitive with nigerian princes.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 00:12 |
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# ? May 22, 2024 10:45 |
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TWBalls posted:I have a working one sitting on my desk if you want it. I seem to recall that Lum likes them as well, so whomever wants it can have it (just pay shipping). If HalloKitty bails out, I wouldn't mind replacing mine with yours. I've actively been considering buying a used one to replace mine since the battery in mine isn't holding a charge anywhere near as well as it used to and I'm kinda skittish about replacing the battery myself.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 00:17 |
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fromoutofnowhere posted:I.. I thought I may have anger issues. You folks really put that back into perspective. Yeah, it's something I've been working on. It's one of the reasons I'm a pothead. Helps keep me calm. Kyrosirus posted:If HalloKitty bails out, I wouldn't mind replacing mine with yours. I've actively been considering buying a used one to replace mine since the battery in mine isn't holding a charge anywhere near as well as it used to and I'm kinda skittish about replacing the battery myself.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 00:39 |
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sfwarlock posted:Recruiting. I'm trying to hire just another low-level set of hands, and I get this one candidate... Most likely someone that's currently on unemployment.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 00:40 |
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TWBalls posted:Yeah, it's something I've been working on. It's one of the reasons I'm a pothead. Helps keep me calm. This. I actually like my job, but the bad days leave me too frazzled and frustrated to drink responsibly, so smoking is a magic cure all.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 00:41 |
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sfwarlock posted:Recruiting. I'm trying to hire just another low-level set of hands, and I get this one candidate... How is application formed? How employees get hired? They need to do way instain manager Who reject these woman when woman can't email back?
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 00:54 |
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RadicalR posted:Most likely someone that's currently on unemployment. This. They've got to submit X number of applications a week to keep their benefits. Years ago managed a fast food place briefly and we'd get several every week that were filled out in such a way that you'd never higher that person, they were just handing them out to any place they could to meet the basic requirements.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 01:21 |
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I've bitched about our network admins before. Well, now it's admin. One left for greener pastures in Nebraska literally the last day of summer vacation. Our consultant still wants us to have a hiring freeze, so now we're down an admin and a junior admin/helpdesk, and they're talking about how we can spread those two jobs around to the six of us left in the department. Anyway, today we had our first meeting of the school year and the manager brought up printing. Always a headache on the best day, but I suppose it's been getting worse (and the admin that left was the one who largely handled the print server). The remaining admin went on a bit of a rant saying how it's IP printers that are loving everything up. He says that the jobs from the print server and direct-IP jobs are colliding, conflicting, and causing corruption, printing out gibberish and forcing him to run scripts to unfuck the printer objects all the time. This is news to me, and it sounds like a line of pure BS to put the blame somewhere else. We techs have been having to resort to setting up direct-IP printers because sometimes the print server drop jobs, garbles jobs, stops sending jobs, won't install, etc. Usually going direct-IP solves every single printing issue we've seen unless the printer itself is failing. Is there an actual problem with printers having people print to them directly via IP and via a print server?
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 01:23 |
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Pyroclastic posted:I've bitched about our network admins before. Well, now it's admin. One left for greener pastures in Nebraska literally the last day of summer vacation. Our consultant still wants us to have a hiring freeze, so now we're down an admin and a junior admin/helpdesk, and they're talking about how we can spread those two jobs around to the six of us left in the department. The only time I have ever seen this was when multiple different sources were sending jobs to a printer all at once instead of one traditional print server but any printer made in the last 10 years should handle those types of tasks just fine.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 02:04 |
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From the last pageLum posted:The bonnet release is on that side too, so you are probably right This caused me no end of frustration trying to get the bonnet on my old mans RHD Fiesta open - 15 minutes of scrabbling round in the drivers footwell and feeling up under the dash only to discover the release levers in IN FULL VIEW over on the passenger side Pissing me off today: I have a new laptop with space bar that makes an annoying squeak every time I press it. Sounds like a minor problem (it still works afterall) but it gets extremely irritating even typing something as short as this post.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 02:20 |
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Pyroclastic posted:Usually going direct-IP solves every single printing issue we've seen unless the printer itself is failing. Cutting out the print server is expedient, gets things working, and completely fucks over your network admin because they can't centrally manage things anymore. Sounds like they deserve it if the print server is screwing up all the time, but it's not a good practice
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 02:54 |
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sfwarlock posted:Recruiting. I'm trying to hire just another low-level set of hands, and I get this one candidate... Time to forward something to Legal.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 03:12 |
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Gunjin posted:This. They've got to submit X number of applications a week to keep their benefits. Years ago managed a fast food place briefly and we'd get several every week that were filled out in such a way that you'd never higher that person, they were just handing them out to any place they could to meet the basic requirements. Not unless she was lying about still working at the golf course.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 03:37 |
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ConfusedUs posted:One of our guys chose F) today for a big client. Overwrote 2000 detailed CAD drawings with old versions. Minimum wage CJ or "consultant", not thinking or caring is pretty much standard practice. I hear similar from IBM contractors constantly: for example pulling all the cables out of a managed layer 3 switch, saying the ports are noted, then proceeding to reinsert cables into random ports and not understanding the problem when nothing comes back up, then goes home. It's more a management problem not well noted in the West, in Asia it is common not to ask questions or to raise concerns so you have to put checks in place to constantly verify and check that staff understand and follow a reasonable and well defined behavior. MrMoo fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Sep 6, 2014 |
# ? Sep 6, 2014 04:13 |
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spiny posted:RE: equipment anger ... Post this in IYG please
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 04:28 |
MrMoo posted:Minimum wage CJ or "consultant", not thinking or caring is pretty much standard practice. I hear similar from IBM contractors constantly: for example pulling all the cables out of a managed layer 3 switch, saying the ports are noted, then proceeding to reinsert cables into random ports and not understanding the problem when nothing comes back up, then goes home. Oh I totally know this. I just don't understand. Even when I was a l1 helldesk guy I gave more of a poo poo than this. Maybe that's why I'm not a low level helpdesk guy anymore, and he still is.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 04:32 |
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TWBalls posted:From what our director was describing, I'm kind of thinking both the 1000 and 2000. I'm pretty sure we'll continue using our current ticketing system (I don't care for it either), but he said that it would be replacing WSUS and our asset tracking system, but then he also mentioned that it would be used for imaging systems as well. We're already using Airwatch as our MDM, so I doubt we'll be getting a 3000. ...how much time do you have? K1000 General comments: -The new layout is better than the old one, but it's incredibly web 2.0. Lots and lots of WHITE. I don't think some items are organized in a particularly intuitive way. -Dell will publish news, bug fix downloads, and KACE box upgrades to the 'Home' page of the device. I barely ever look at the 'Home' page. Some of the poo poo they post there is like ' KACE BOX VULNERABILITY! DOWNLOAD THIS PATCH NOW NOW NOW!!! ' but not notify customers of this via email or anything. The onus is on you I guess to pay attention to this poo poo. I've even asked the KACE techs on one of my numerous support sessions if they could just create a page on their site with bug fix announcements but I guess. -You can set the box to do automatic backups, and you can download those backups to an offsite location. But if you upgrade your box and find out something is now hosed, too bad, you can only restore to a backup if the backup is the same exact version number as the current firmware!! And yeah every update will increment that number so essentially you cannot restore from a backup after an upgrade at all. You have to start from scratch. lol! Asset management: -KACE agent will just randomly stop connecting to the box. You won't actually know which device is having this problem until you go through and manually check all (yes, all) the devices that haven't checked in for a while (say, over a week). Then you get to go through and manually try to connect to them somehow to see if they really are online and KACE is just lying to you. If you find they are online, you get to redeploy the KACE agent to the device and hope it will connect again. While the agent isn't connected the device isn't getting patched or updated. Of the 300 or so devices we manage this way, I'd say it happens to about 10 per week. There is no rhyme or reason as to why this happens. -We have a remote replication share for patches at every site (saves bandwidth, computers don't have to phone home to the main box for patches this way). You better watch those machines like a hawk though because if the agent on those machines decides to stop working, not only will that machine not be patched, every machine that relies on it for patching won't be patched either. -You can't actually deploy the KACE agent via the KACE box. I mean, it tells you that you can, but it basically doesn't work. Or at least it didn't before the upgrade to 6.0, I've not bothered to try since then. I have to use (the ever trusty and faithful) PDQ Deploy to do it. -You can't uninstall the KACE agent without jumping through a bunch of hoops because Dell throught "hey, if the Agent doesn't show up in the list of installed programs, it means users won't be able to install it!!" It's seriously dumb as hell: https://support.software.dell.com/k1000/kb/120358 -You can't retire assets. They're active or you delete the asset and all history relating to it. There is no exporting. If you want to keep a record of them you're gonna keep paying for that 'node' (their word for the per-asset license) forever. -Assets you want to add that aren't computers are gonna have to be entered manually. You can use the offline agents or w/e they are calling them now to 'detect' devices on the network but then you're gonna be paying for every printer you let it auto detect which is just dumb. -Distributed software installs (basically, manually created tasks to deploy some software) sometimes just don't work. To make them 'on demand' you have to add the computer to the list of computers it will run on. Then, you have to force an inventory of that computer. The inventory will run, and then maybe it will install, maybe not. It might take a couple tries. Who knows why it works the first time on one machine, but never install on another. Patching: -This is mostly working fine for me at this point. But I did go through dozens, perhaps more than 100 hours of reviewing training, self learning, and dealing with KACE techs to get my patching schedules, patch labels, download settings etc to the point they are at today. Detect scans are run 2x a week, patches are downloaded as needed every 4 hours, and a patch deployment happens once a week on a Sunday (when all our locations are closed). Sometimes patches will just fail to download for some reason. I will also have machines that will fail out on the patch deployments for Reasons. I used to go through and check every single week and manually re-run a patch deployment on the machines that failed. I don't anymore because I just don't have the patience for it. Ticketing system -Just click on this and read it http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3564747&pagenumber=295&perpage=40#post430453195 . IT'S STILL NOT PATCHED -Do you know SQL? If not, you're going to have a really hard time getting anything but basic functionality out of the ticketing system. poo poo like "send me an email when a user submits a ticket" is NOT a feature. I have almost no programming background, so I had to have a KACE tech help me write up a query to do this. There is a query wizard but it's garbage. -Can't view time ticket has been open. There's a bug that it only displays in number of seconds, and only up to 10 digits. Cuts off after that. I submitted a bug report months ago. -Can't really create dynamic ticket layouts. Have no control over size/position of various fields. No way to leave comments or instructions for users on the ticket page -Can't create ticket processes with dependencies. No "if X then do Y". You get one ticket layout per queue. Gotta create a new queue to get a new ticket layout. Users -You can import user info via LDAP but only once a day. So if a user changes their password after that update, they can't log into the portal! Knowledge Base -If you create a KB article, you better save a copy of it externally. When you submit your changes, it immediately strips out the formatting. You'll be able to see your formatted article on the user side of things, but on the admin side, your little edit box will just show plain text. The next day, it will have stripped the formatting on the user side too. I have no idea why this happens. I've submitted a bug report, months ago. The first time it happened I lost hours of work. Now I save all articles as an .html file. -Uploaded images/documents for KB articles cannot be deleted ever. To get rid of them you have to upload something with the same file name to 'erase' it. KACE Support -Pretty much the worst part about having a KACE box. You submit a support ticket, it might be days before you receive a response. KACE techs will contradict other KACE techs. They will contradict what your trainer told you. You will come to have a better understanding of why the boxes gently caress up than the KACE techs do (I know I have). It has taken MONTHS to resolve some of the issues I've had. Their support is terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrribbbbbbblllllllleeeeeeeeeeee. K2000 -Honestly, I've barely even used this thing. Almost all of my time is spent fussing with the K1000. I bet I've imaged 2 computers with it, as a test, in the whole time we've had it. Maybe it actually works and is awesome? ahahaha yeah right it's KACE who am I kidding -We have 18 remote sites. To use the K2000 to image remotely, we have to have a virtualized remote server at every site. The KACE RSA (remote server appliance) is compatible with VMWare only. Can't use HyperVisor at all. As a 100% Windows shop for us this is a real drag. The KACE site lists HyperV support as coming soon as of 2011. There's probably more that I'm just blocking from my mind/forgetting since it's something I'm looking at daily. We got training too when we first bought the devices. Vic, our trainer, is the first and last bit of good I've experienced from the KACE techs. He knew his poo poo and was friendly and personable. He made all the other techs I've interacted with since look like a bunch of troglodytes. Even with 4 hours of training (that were recorded and I've been able to review on numerous occasions), I was really not prepared for the amount of work and daily maintenance I would have to do on the K1000. I feel like things have gotten 'better' between me and KACE in the past couple of months, but that may also be because I've kinda given up the fight. I've submitted over a dozen bug reports and not a single one has ever had a fix. Not a single one. I've spent hundreds of hours trying to get our boxes working at an acceptable level and was really the only one in my organization who was responsible for them. It works ok now. I guess I have settled for that. KACE doesn't care and nothing I can do can make them care.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 04:48 |
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ConfusedUs posted:Oh I totally know this. I just don't understand. Even when I was a l1 helldesk guy I gave more of a poo poo than this. Classic "jobs worth", in for the paycheck not a profession. Pretty much like C++ developers who haven't heard of C++11 let alone C++14: explicitly to the extent of ignoring things that make your job easier because then you would not be busy and can be fired.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 05:04 |
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Sirotan posted:...how much time do you have? Thanks for this. Looks like I'm in for quite the headache.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 06:00 |
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:If you haven't broken a keyboard over your knee I don't really want to know you. I prefer the "smash it with my fist until my hand hurts" move. I mostly save my irrational fury for being mad at video games, though. I don't have enough fucks to give about work to get mad.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 09:24 |
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fromoutofnowhere posted:I.. I thought I may have anger issues. You folks really put that back into perspective. If it helps, I imagine half of us don't actually do this in a fit of rage. I know whenever I break some of my stuff its because I go "well gently caress this, i'll just get a new one" and I don't want the option of changing my mind later.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 11:49 |
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TWBalls posted:Thanks for this. Looks like I'm in for quite the headache. Except for when the agent just stops working for no reason, the patching feature isn't too bad. Not being familiar with WSUS I can't say if it is better or worse than that, maybe better since Dell is responsible for maintaining the patch listings and if Microsoft recalls something they will remove them for you. There's also a bunch of features I've never even explored because I just don't have the time to. Reporting and various automated scripting. Those could be great! Maybe you will have a better time at it. I've sometimes wondered if maybe my box is just defective somehow since I do not know anyone else that works with KACE, and I find little to no negative comments about the devices on their 'forums' over at ITNinja. The only thing I've found that made me think maybe I wasn't crazy was this discussion on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1th403/dell_kace_is_a_piece_of_sht_and_looking_to_get/ But hey, on the upside, now I will know one other person who can empathize and understand my KACE woes.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 14:08 |
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Is KACE strictly server management, or workstations also?
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 18:26 |
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Comradephate posted:I prefer the "smash it with my fist until my hand hurts" move. We fired a guy for throwing a keyboard at the wall. He had a couple other anger issues prior, and we thought he was going to come back and shoot the place up.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 19:32 |
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stubblyhead posted:Is KACE strictly server management, or workstations also? Both. It can patch Mac, Linux and Unix systems too though I've not had any experience with that.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 21:58 |
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Bob Morales posted:We fired a guy for throwing a keyboard at the wall. He had a couple other anger issues prior, and we thought he was going to come back and shoot the place up. Yeah, we tolerate going into the server room and yelling obscenities, but throwing poo poo (other than nerf) will get your rear end canned. If you can't manage your anger, go find somewhere else to have a tantrum. I once worked in a global network security group and we regularly dealt with senior level executives of various divisions around the globe. So attitude and "I'm a special snowflake" poo poo had to be checked at the door. After one particularly stressful meeting regarding a security failure at a European location, one of my colleagues headbutted a glass panel and shattered it. He was let go (after we called the ambulance for him).
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 22:05 |
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There's a big difference between throwing a $5 mouse across an office full of people trying to do work and grabbing a broken $100 printer, taking it behind the dumpster and throwing it at a brick wall a few times. Neither are ideal, but the most important thing is to not hurt people or accidentally cause a lot more damage than intended. With the printer, you might as well grab a coworker or two and make an event out of it.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 22:36 |
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Bob Morales posted:We fired a guy for throwing a keyboard at the wall. He had a couple other anger issues prior, and we thought he was going to come back and shoot the place up. I dunno, I think people that vent anger by breaking poo poo aren't the ones to worry about, since they feel better after breaking poo poo. The people with no outlet are the concerning ones. That said, I'm not a child, so I can control my temper at work and have never had even a minor issue. Just don't invite me over to play call of duty and lend me a controller.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 23:08 |
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My venting consists of foul language and a weekly or fortnightly trip to my local airsoft site. No breaking poo poo.
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# ? Sep 6, 2014 23:33 |
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My 'phone meets chopsaw' was a cold calculated pre-meditated act of willfull destruction. That phone had been pissing me off for months, and I finally had enough when it 'no signal'd me once too many, so after I got home from work, I opened my workshop, donned my safety goggles, then chopped the gently caress out of that Samsung. Then I ordered a Nexus 5, which is what I should have done in the first place. bonus info: my chopsaw is a 'Rage' branded unit ( http://www.evolutionpowertools.com/uk/build/rage3.php )
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# ? Sep 7, 2014 00:04 |
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Drink. Smoke. Troll the internet. Have lots of sex. Keys to venting stress.
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# ? Sep 7, 2014 00:13 |
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:There's a big difference between throwing a $5 mouse across an office full of people trying to do work and grabbing a broken $100 printer, taking it behind the dumpster and throwing it at a brick wall a few times.
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# ? Sep 7, 2014 00:49 |
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RFC2324 posted:Drink. Smoke. Troll the internet. Not every goon has access to a willing mate. Nor is willing to spend money to rent one.
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# ? Sep 7, 2014 06:16 |
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Years ago, one of our sites had been dealing with a real piece of poo poo program that the vendor installed on a lovely out of date system. They were already in works to move to a new program, but they begged the company to let them move it to a newer machine. The company refused, as they were assholes and would only allow them to buy a new system, and that system was slower then an average desktop computer, much less a dedicated server. Anway, upgrade finally happens, they cram as many people into a conference room as they can when the company president calls this vendor and tells them they are dropping their product and they won't be re-upping the contract. All the old hardware is rounded up, brought into the parking lot and people are a allowed a swing at the hardware for a quarter. First person up is a gentle looking old lady who hands them a $5 bill, grabs the hammer and goes loving nuts on this computer. They had to grab more disposal computers from storage to give everyone something to swing at. We asked if we could do this with some old hardware, but the IT manager wanted to get scrap value for it.
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# ? Sep 7, 2014 06:19 |
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RadicalR posted:Not every goon has access to a willing mate.
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# ? Sep 7, 2014 07:10 |
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CitizenKain posted:We asked if we could do this with some old hardware, but the IT manager wanted to get scrap value for it. Pah, scrap value is nothing. Penny pinching on old IT stuff would worry me.
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# ? Sep 7, 2014 11:07 |
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My old boss used to be my boxing mate. About half a year after we began boxing he came into work one day with a 50 kg punching bag and a pair of bag gloves. Apart from going to the shooting range that thing was the best stress reliever ever. We hung it in the basement under the department, and at least once per day someone would duck into the basement to unwind for a minute when they've had some fool on the line again.
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# ? Sep 7, 2014 12:07 |
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Two years ago, the last time anyone at my company thought having an employee appreciation day/week was a good idea, I proposed a computer smashing event where we'd take a bunch of old desktops and printers out back in the parking lot, put down a tarp and hand people goggles and a sledge hammer and let them go at it. Got the approval of all the C-levels (in writting!!) A YEAR out before this event. Everyone I talked to thought it was a great idea, they were excited and looking forward to it. A week before this was going to happen I was designing some flyers to advertise the event and the HR director who had previously approved my idea, upon being reminded it was happening, suddenly went to the CEO and had the Employee Appreciation Week committee tell me it was no longer going to happen. "It doesn't set a good example" was the only explanation I was given. So they had a bubble gum blowing contest instead. Thinking about this still makes me angry tbqh.
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# ? Sep 7, 2014 14:32 |
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Sirotan posted:So they had a bubble gum blowing contest instead. Wow. Are your colleagues 10 years old? Your idea was way better. Thankfully I get to do that anyway, since as I work at a school (although not for much longer!) in the holidays, we clear out the old gear; tossing and smashing it to our hearts' content.
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# ? Sep 7, 2014 15:20 |
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# ? May 22, 2024 10:45 |
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HalloKitty posted:Wow. Are your colleagues 10 years old? No, but the higher-ups sure treat us like we are. The finale of that Employee Appreciation Week was a huge surprise from all the VPs...which turned out to be an e-card, sent from Blue Mountain.
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# ? Sep 7, 2014 15:45 |